Currently This

I was once a regular topic of discussion on an Internet forum. It was not the kind of place I would normally post to anymore than Filthy McNasty's Strip Club is the kind of place I would go for a drink. They were beneath me then and have evolved since only to the extent that we are separated, as intellectuals, by a mere five hundred differences in our genomes.

This did not stop me from reading their critiques of my blog, nor did it stop me from responding in kind. They were beneath me, but not too far beneath me. An Internet flame war is great fun when you are really pissed at the world in general and outraged, specifically, by the opinions of those intellectually separated from you by only a few hundred genes (I'm reading the new Michael Crichton - can you tell?). The point is that my interest in that flame war burned and then passed like any other interest I have, brightly and quickly. It was a hobby and I have since moved on to new ones.

The reason I mention it now is because someone else who was also a subject of their discussion recently expressed surprise that she continues to be. She was also surprised by the level of nastiness displayed when voicing their opinions. I don't know why she would be. She herself was once dragging her own knuckles on the ground. I moved on but I did not forget either my nastiness nor theirs. I moved on but I don't kid myself that I am really above getting naked and wrestling in the mud with the rest of them, assuming the right provocation. I never like hypocrisy and that seems, well, disingenuous at best.

More, though, I wonder that she still seems, these many years later, available to be influenced by the opinions expressed there. She seems hurt that they do not like her and surprised it hasn't changed. I wonder why. Why would it matter to her what their opinions of her are now, unless she is still much the same person she was then? It comes across as being worried what the kid in third grade who regularly knocked you down thinks of your parenting skills now. What possible difference can it make, especially when you can choose whether or not to expose yourself to the bullying?

That made me wonder about my mother and why her opinion can still do so much damage, no matter how many times I remind myself that she is damaged and her opinions of me are colored by her fears, injuries and jealousies. I removed that woman from our lives not only because she hurts, but because she enjoys twisting the knife.

There is a similarity in the Internet flame war in that when you engage, you do it to twist the knife and you do that with the hope of causing real harm - real Internet harm, anyway. No one really believed there were actual, real people reading or typing any of that, which is not to negate the immense benefit of getting to scream anger into the void. For that to work, there needs to be someone listening at the other end, someone to acknowledge, however kindly or nastily, your shrieking rage. However real it may have seemed in the moment, though, it seems now an experiment in a lab that was closed, locked and filed away. Whatever there was to be learned was and now we are on to the next question.

I don't know where all of this is going, really. Maybe what makes that woman fear the opinion of the people she disliked (because she was ostracized by them?) angers me because, deep down, it reminds me of how easily my Mommy can hurt me and who needs to be reminded of that, right? It seems that there is something left unexplored in me, something the weakness of this woman has exposed, something to do with how much I hate my own weakness in the face of my mother.

I hate that shit.